“The hair’s a bit different,” she said, desperate to break the silence that had settled between them.
He raised a hand and ran it over the soft bristles. “Fundraising scheme for cancer research. With my wife the way she was...”
Ellie nodded, still disconcerted.
“... some of us volunteered to have our heads shaved in public at a local charity auction a couple of weeks ago. Raised thousands. Easier than selling raffle tickets or whatever. It was in the papers.”
She must have missed it in the staff-room. She didn’t pay out even the small amount for a newspaper if she could save it toward her soon-to-be new house, and she’d been too busy to spend much time on the internet news sites lately. But she could picture all too clearly the cruel clippers buzzing over his scalp, and the dark silk of his hair cascading onto the floor.
Years ago she’d run her fingers through it, delighting in its thick softness. “You had lovely hair.” She bit her lip, angry she’d let slip such a telling comment, but he took no apparent notice.
“It’ll grow. Not a great price to pay in summer.” He changed the subject abruptly. “And you became a teacher? You said that’s what you wanted, back in Sydney.”
Ellie was surprised he’d remembered. “Yes,” she said, thinking of the sacrifices she and her mother had both made to bring it about. Going without the daily newspaper had been the least of it.
“And there was a fire? Ginny said something about that. She’s out picking flowers to arrange at the local church, by the way. She’ll be back inside soon.”
Ellie nodded. Ginny had welcomed her yesterday, shown her to her room, and provided a delicious dinner. She’d been surprised not to see her this morning. Just as well she hadn’t been in the kitchen a few minutes ago!
“The place I was renting burned down,” she murmured, remembering the panic-stricken night, and Cal’s screams, and the crackling pitiless flames. “There wasn’t much that escaped. I grabbed a few clothes and the photo album, but that was all I saved.”
And my lovely son, she added to herself. Your lovely son from all those years ago. The best thing in my life.
She took a deep breath, hoping to relax the searing tension out of her spine. “I’m close to moving into a new house I’m having built. When I’ve finished my contract here, it should be ready.”
“So—the job you wanted. A new house. A husband, too?”
The query hung between them like a monstrous multi-coloured elephant.
“Two out of three ain’t bad,” she replied, trying to keep her voice level and non-committal, but not managing to hold his gaze.
For there was no husband—not even the sniff of one. After Tony, no man had gotten close to her. No-one was as vivid, as desirable, as all-pervading. She knew this for the truth, however much she tried to convince herself that producing a baby, managing her teacher training, caring for her child, working, and saving for a home, had occupied her whole time and left none for a man. Tony had stolen her heart and never returned it.
Somehow she dragged up the courage to raise her eyes to his again. “I’ve never married. Not my thing. I’m enjoying being independent, relying on myself.” She gave a small shrug to indicate that a husband was the least of her needs, but when the toast sprang up, she jumped too; so tense that it took only that tiny unexpected shock to push her over the edge.
Tony reached across, juggling the steaming slices in his long capable hands as he slid them into the antique silver toast rack. “What will you eat? Bacon and eggs? Cereal? Have a look in the pantry if you like.”
“Toast is fine.” She reached for a slice at the same instant he did, and pulled her fingers back as though he was red hot.
“Sorry—after you,” he said, pushing the toast toward her with an engaging smile. Her son’s smile exactly.
The fragile shreds of Ellie’s hard won composure disappeared again.
Tony’s smile. Tony’s thick dark hair. Tony’s killer eyelashes. Callum had them all. If Tony ever saw his son he’d recognise him instantly.
There was such danger here! She knew now there was no way she could allow Cal to visit her at the farm if she wanted to keep him safe. She’d have to go back into town to see him whenever she could. Bringing her son here for a few days was simply impossible. Tony would seduce him away from her. With his money and charm and land, and most of all, his masculinity. Cal desperately wanted a father, and Ellie had fallen way short there.
She concentrated on buttering her toast, aware she was being inspected.
“Mine’s not the only hair that’s different,” Tony said.
Memories crowded in on her. For that long-ago holiday in Australia her hair had been fiery red.
“This is more my real colour.”
“You had lovely dark eyebrows.”
He’d noticed? Her heart jolted. “Bit of a giveaway, were they?”
“Made me wonder.”
She forced herself to relax a little. “I was young enough and silly enough to believe being a redhead would be fun.” She managed a wry smile. “Maggie talked me into it, of course. There was hell to pay from my mother once I came back to New Zealand.”
He nodded, eyes still fixed intently on her face. “And how is Maggie? Still a party animal?”
Ellie laughed at his description, relieved to be on safer ground. She supposed Maggie had seemed lively company in Sydney. “She’s a nurse for one of the big aid agencies. She was injured in Afghanistan a few years ago, but that didn’t stop her. She’s working in Somalia now. We keep in touch.”
“She was quite a girl.”
“And still is.” She cast about for another topic before he could grill her further about her own life. “How did the rest of the trip work out for you and Darren?” She tipped her head on one side, indicating she expected him to entertain her with travel stories.
“Fantastic couple of years. The overland route through Australia was great. The interior is mind-boggling. The distances. The dryness of the place.” He smiled crookedly. “I hated leaving you.”
“Don’t,” she begged. “Yes—I hated it too. You know I did, the way I cried all over you.” She shook her head to chase the wretched memory away. She’d spent their last night together in extreme distress, sobbing and hiccupping and apologising, and then starting all over again as he’d stroked her hair and tried to soothe her. “But that was always how it was going to be with us, Tony. A holiday romance—nothing more. You and Darren were travelling on. I needed to come home to do my teacher training. It was another life. Long gone.”
She gritted her teeth, determined to keep her expression calm. This was the last thing she needed. Meeting Tony again had utterly demolished her self-possession. Trying to relive the past would disrupt all the careful plans she’d put in place... make the years of unrelenting work and deprivation seem even tougher.
Ellie had found herself pregnant just as she was about to start her teacher training, and Tony was probably half the world away by then, travelling who-knew-where.
Her mother, Rebecca, had been widowed early and never remarried. Unwilling to let her daughter live the same hard life, she’d encouraged and cajoled and insisted that Ellie took a temporary clerical job until Callum was born, and then attended Teachers’ College with the following year’s intake.
It had been grindingly hard, but at last, with steady work as an on-call relief teacher, Ellie had saved the deposit for her modest new home.
She had it all planned. Her mother would move out of the tiny church-owned flat. They’d live as a threesome in the house with a bedroom each. There’d be a sunny courtyard with terracotta pots full of lavender. A lawn where Callum could kick a ball around. Finally she’d feel he had what he deserved.
The fire in her flat had been shattering. But because she’d possessed very little, she’d lost very little. Now, facing up to Tony, she knew she had everything to lose. For what man wouldn’t want to claim his only son? A son who resembled him so closely that
it was startling?
Cal was everything to Ellie. Everything and more. He was her reason for living and breathing... for working and striving... for planning and succeeding.
“Another life?” Tony queried, breaking into her churning thoughts.
“Sydney was years ago,” she dismissed, in a voice she hoped wasn’t trembling like the rest of her.
He regarded her steadily across the table, then rose to his feet. She drew a quiet breath. He was an imposing figure—so tall now he was standing beside her. A man in his prime. Hard-muscled and strong... tanned and aggressively male. The brutal haircut made him look tougher and more demanding. But even without that, he would have stolen her wits away. He was everything she’d remembered and imagined for the last eleven years—plus apparent wealth and easy authority and undiluted charm.
He bent swiftly and cupped her face in his hands. Before she could react, he kissed her—warm, fast, and sure. She slammed a hand against his chest to try and deflect him, but it was too late. And as she gasped with surprise, he flicked his tongue between her parted lips, setting all her nerve ends jangling, and unleashing the yearning she’d been keeping a tight rein on for so long.
He straightened seconds later and sauntered across to the pantry. “It’s good to see you again, Ellie.”
She sat stock-still, rigid with the whiplash of desire. It had been so long since she’d let any man get close to her, and now it had to be this one. “Don’t do that again, please Tony,” she whispered. “I can’t possibly work here if you’re going to stir up the past.”
“It was just hello.”
~♥~
He pulled the pantry doors open, knowing it had been a hell of a lot more than that. It had been hello, and you’re beautiful, and I remember everything. Seeing her again had shocked him to the soles of his feet. He’d been totally unable to keep his hands off her. How, after all this time, could she still do this to him?
He rattled around amongst the jars, pushing the honey and peanut butter and pickles aside with no idea of what he was looking for.
She was still the girl in the white bikini who had stared at him with such longing, thinking she was hidden behind her sunglasses. The girl who’d attracted him so fiercely that he’d dived into the hotel swimming pool, hoping the cold water would force his lustful blood back to more appropriate parts of his body.
And she was doing it to him again. With a view of nothing more stirring than preserves and tinned salmon, he was rock hard and aching. “I’ll hardly be trying to jump you in front of my mother-in-law and daughters,” he muttered.
“Good.”
“But it’s amazing to see you again.”
“Yes.”
~♥~
Ellie flinched. She sounded like some prissy pruned-up old maid. “Sorry—I just wasn’t expecting it,” she added, trying to make amends. She drank him in while he stared broodingly into the shelves of groceries. His long legs, she noted with despair, were as good as ever. He wore army-khaki shorts, and bulky work socks. Presumably he’d kicked off his boots at the door.
The soft old blue polo shirt was no sort of fashion statement with the khaki shorts and thick socks, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his rangy body.
She’d run her hands down that long back. Raked her fingernails over those broad shoulders as her body clenched in ecstasy around his. Licked every square inch of his skin. And she felt desperately ready to do it all again.
Her fingers relaxed as her mind wandered, and the knife slid off her plate with a clatter. They both startled. Ellie bent to retrieve it from the tiled floor. Tony swung away from the pantry and took it from her. He crossed to the counter, washed and dried the knife, and returned it.
She nodded her thanks.
“Strawberry jam? Honey? Marmalade?” he asked.
“Yes please.”
“All of them?”
“Uh... no, of course not. Um... strawberry jam.” She floundered deeper. Lord, if this was the best she could manage discussing breakfast spreads, what hope did she have when pieces of their shared past turned up in conversation?
Tony took the jam from the shelf and set it down beside her plate. He sat. The intense atmosphere was broken seconds later by the arrival of a mini-whirlwind. His five-year-old twins and a wheezing brown spaniel skidded into the sunny farmhouse kitchen together.
“I won.”
“No—I won.”
“I think Tasha beat you both,” Tony said as he bent to rub the old dog’s ears.
He spread his arms wide and both daughters launched themselves into his lap. He tightened an arm around each and kissed the tops of their blonde heads. Ellie met his eyes again as she watched the little family tableau.
“So you’re going to turn my two scatterbrains into brain-boxes?” he asked.
“I’m hoping so,” she replied, wishing fervently she was the one being hugged. “I thought we might start with a walk around the outside of the house,” she said to the girls, hoping her pounding heart wasn’t making her voice quake. “You can tell me all the things you know and I can find out what I’ll have to teach you.”
“Ten more minutes,” Tony said, glancing at the kitchen clock and releasing his daughters.
“When the big hand’s on twelve, and the little hand’s on nine, Daddy.”
“Right,” he agreed, rising to switch on the electric kettle. “Antonia and Carolyn,” he added to Ellie. “You’ll soon be able to tell them apart.” He made a game of chasing the girls out of the kitchen and turned back to her. “Tea or coffee? You always had coffee in Sydney if I remember rightly.” One dark eyebrow quirked up with the question.
“Yes, still coffee,” she said—the memory of her first morning with him slamming back to taunt her. Because of course they’d drifted asleep after making love, and woken as the early sun spilled across them, Tony moving over her to imprison her beneath him yet again.
“Not too sore?” he’d asked between hopeful kisses. And Ellie, already alight, had murmured she’d be fine, and opened to him. He’d pleasured her first with a knowing finger, circling smoothly, insistently, until she’d relaxed and was ready, panting softly as her climax approached. Then, as she gasped with the pleasure of it, he slid home with a long husky sigh of satisfaction.
“Much too sore,” she’d teased him a little later, as their bodies glided together in the tumbled bed. He was gentle with her. And afterwards, he’d brought coffee to bed, dipping his forefinger into the mug, anointing her nipples and licking the coffee off again as she giggled.
“Still black?” he asked.
“Mmmm?” She was miles away.
“Still have your coffee black?”
She nodded, not able to speak for a moment. She was in the shower with him, soaping him all over, before he left for work that long-ago morning. She’d never seen such a beautiful body, and Tony was not the least self-conscious about his superb physical assets. In the bright light of the bathroom she’d explored and admired him, watching with fascination as his sex responded to her slippery caresses.
She shook herself back to the present and accepted her coffee, eyes avoiding his probing gaze, willing the tremors to leave her. For she was shaking all over, remembering. And she must try not to remember. Not to remember that golden week when she’d finally been treated as a woman. “It sounds as though the twins know how to tell the time, anyway,” she said in desperation.
“They’re okay on time, and numbers generally. Julia got them up to speed there.”
Ellie noticed he said his wife’s name matter-of-factly—no emotional catch in his voice.
“And you’ll find they’re very good on how animals make babies.” He flashed a wicked grin at her as Ellie choked on her coffee. He rose and reached to circle a firm hand over her back until she recovered from her splutters.
She had to fight hard not to respond to his well-meaning caress. Because of course it was only a pat on the back—she’d certainly not read more than that into it.
“Fine on colours,” he continued, hand still circling softly. “No good at reading. Should they be reading yet?”
She cleared her throat and tried to shrink away from him. “It’s time to make a start. I’ll get onto that right away.”
He nodded, satisfied. “How strange it should be you,” he mused. “Ellinore for Ellie. I gave it no real thought...”
“You had other things on your mind.”
Another woman, another family.
“Yes... well...” He finally removed his hand and Ellie willed herself not to snatch it back. It had felt so right moving across her thin T-shirt, comforting her yearning skin.
She took a bite of her toast and found she’d not yet spread it with jam. She reached for the jar—brand new, the lid firmly screwed on. Store-bought, not homemade, which she found surprising so far from the nearest town. She wrenched at it to open it, but it was stuck down with sugar.
Tony closed a warm hand around hers. “Let me,” he said without fuss.
She relinquished the jar to his superior strength, and watched as he twisted it undone. “Not a luxury I’m used to.”
“Strawberry jam?”
“A man to open jars.”
He laughed at that. “Husband’s duty,” he said. “Julia ended up as weak as a kitten. Ginny has some arthritis in her hands. And my two tinies aren’t up to it yet.” He cast an amused glance in the twins’ direction. They peeked around the doorframe, waiting for Ellie to finish her breakfast. “Can’t wait for the teacher, eh? We’ll see how long that lasts.”
“Don’t put them off before I’ve even started!”
He dropped his voice so only Ellie could hear. “They’re keen for any attention at all. They’ve... missed out on some of the things they should have been enjoying.”
Ellie watched his beautiful lips compress, itching to hear more, yet not wanting to know how much in love he’d been with the mother of his children. She pushed the last corner of toast into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Right,” she said. “We’ll see how enjoyable we can make things. Do you have any cardboard? Old grocery cartons that we could cut up, maybe?”
Christmas Down Under: Six Sexy New Zealand & Australian Christmas Romances Page 35
